His Life’s a Marathon : Manny Wein, 89, Is Back in Race After Dancing Strength Away in ’91 and Finishing in Hospital

After their 89-year-old father finished the 1991 Los Angeles Marathon in an ambulance on his way to a hospital, Manny Wein’s three children hoped he would finally call an end to his long-distance running career and start acting his age.

And what was Wein’s response?

Na, na, na, na, na.

“My father doesn’t listen to anyone,” said his daughter, Gaye Wein-Shepard.

Manny Wein, rebel without a rocking chair. “Everybody’s keeping after me to stop running,” he said. “But I’m just going to keep on going.”

And going . . . and going. On Sunday, about a month before his 90th birthday, Wein will once again defy age, medical science and his own children by running in his fifth L.A. Marathon. Having completed all 26 miles 385 yards in each of the first three, he is the oldest runner to finish the race. Last year’s incident--he was felled by dehydration at the 13-mile mark--hurt his pride. This time, he’s taking the race seriously.

“I’m not going out dancing the night before this one,” he said.

If he did learn a lesson from 1991, it was to stop doing the things that even a kid couldn’t get away with it.

A year ago at the Shrine Auditorium, Wein wore himself out doing the cha-cha after the traditional pre-race carbohydrate dinner. An accomplished ballroom and folk dancer who dances four nights a week and wins seniors’ dance contests, Wein was asked to “entertain” the crowd. It was an offer he couldn’t resist. So he danced into the night, a breach of training, he said in retrospect, that was “foolish and disconcerting.”

This year, Wein has been working with a running coach and promises to stay off the dance floor for the entire week before the race. “I want to finish (the marathon) by 4 o’clock,” he said. That translates into a seven-hour race, meaning that Wein will have to cut more than three hours off his usual 10-hour performance.

The incentive is there: There’s a party at the finish. “The other years, I came in so late, I missed the celebration,” he said. “I don’t like missing the celebration.”

A slight man who “used to be 5-foot-8,” he has a deep appreciation for life.

“Manny has the right attitude,” said Mary T. Laub, Wein’s 73-year-old dance-contest partner.

Wein doesn’t need an excuse to have fun. Relaxing on a sofa at a park recreation complex recently, he suddenly jumped up, ready to rumba, when somebody began playing Gershwin on a piano in another room. “Hey, we’re getting music ,” he said. Then he grabbed an imaginary partner and waltzed her around the room.

“See,” said Wein, who won L.A.’s “best senior couple” contest with Laub two years ago. “I slide so I don’t hurt my knee.”

Remarkably, a bad knee and an ache in his lower back are the only reminders of his mortality. Throughout his life, he has been blessed with robust health. He says he is rarely sick and until his problem at the marathon last year, he had never been in a hospital. Wein moves with grace and rhythm on a dance floor, although sitting in one spot for a while makes him creak: “I don’t move that easily,” he said as he slowly got out of a car.

Wein attributes his health to a longtime obsession with diet. While bumming around Europe in the 1920s, he subsisted on nuts and later became a strict vegetarian. Today, he eats a limited diet of about 20 items, including fruit, brown rice, chickpeas and boiled water with raisins.

“If he gets a slight cold, he changes his diet,” said his 55-year-old daughter Gaye, a psychotherapist.

No doubt dancing has contributed to Wein’s physical and mental fitness, keeping him limber, conditioning his cardiovascular system and providing him with important social interaction.

“Last Saturday night, Mary and I danced almost every dance,” he said, adding that “Mary doesn’t like to sit out.”

He used to go dancing with his wife, Miriam, until she died 23 years ago. Now, his dance card is full all the time and he has several “girlfriends.”

Dancing by itself, of course, can’t prepare him for a marathon. So Wein also does stretching exercises in his one-bedroom Van Nuys apartment, swims and works out at a gym and runs from one to four miles most days, depending on his dance load.

“When I have a heavy dance coming up, I hold it down,” said Wein, who runs “in the gutter against traffic on residential streets. It’s more interesting than a park. I don’t like to run around and around.” He describes himself as a “trotter, which is in between a runner and a walker.”

Wein began his athletic career at a time in life when most athletes lighten up: In his mid-70s, he retired from the dry-cleaning business and took up running, entering “loads and loads of 10Ks,” some with Gaye. On a whim, he decided to enter the 1988 L.A. Marathon, hoping only “to do a part of it,” he said. “I was really surprised when I finished. I had really struggled.”

Despite his success--he also ran in and finished the New York Marathon in 1988--Wein isn’t impressed with himself. At the L.A. Marathon three years ago, he walked and trotted and clocked 10 hours 31 minutes 19 seconds to win the 80-and-over division, but he dismisses his performance with a laugh: “Most likely, I was the only one to enter (the division).”

Indeed, people approaching 90 aren’t known for athletic behavior or taking part in an activity that scares their children. When Wein enters a marathon, his kids “get frightened,” Gaye said.

Deep down, however, they realize that father knows best. “He loves to run and he loves to dance,” she said. “It makes him feel vital. We think it’s wonderful.

That doesn’t stop her from worrying. In the hours after a marathon, Gaye stays by the phone at her Pasadena home, waiting for a reassuring call. But by the time her father finishes the race--more than eight hours behind the winner--the sun has set, the police have gone home and traffic has become an obstacle, “so I wait and I wait for him to phone,” she said.

Last year, the call came from his hospital room. A female friend was with him, Gaye reported, and they sounded as if they were having a good time.

“My father is an amazing man,” she said. “He was an orphan, and he worked hard to make the rest of his life better. The later years have been the best years. There are not many people who can say that. This has been a wonderful part of life for him. We all wish that, at 90, these things can be happening.”

Such as cheering crowds during a race and celebrity treatment from the marathon organizers.

“When I ran in New York, they didn’t know I was alive,” Wein said, “but in L.A., they give me everything for free.” Including his entry fee and even his shoes.

The rest he can handle by himself.